Carbohydrate reserves vary significantly depending on diet, age, person, etc.
Switching from a carbohydrate metabolism to a fat metabolism can really stress the body. Strongly suggest you discuss with a good, registered dietitian. That is what my VA primary doctor told me when I mentioned having gone on Soylent. I can at least monitor my glucose levels Bid (2x/day). Your choice of course just trying to help.

Strongly suggest you discuss with a good, registered dietitian. That is what my VA primary doctor told me when I mentioned having gone on Soylent…

Thanks for the concern, but I didn’t jump into the pool unprepared.

I’ve been doing periodic fasting (of the one-day variety) for way more than a decade, so my body has learned to adapt well, and I did meet with my doctor to discuss the extended fasting and have a full blood workup done before starting the 72-hour fasting… I was due for the bloodwork, anyway, so insurance covered it, but it was a great opportunity to discuss the research, my plans, and fitness for it with my doctor.

Also, I’m set up for glucose testing, too, but I only do it out of scientific curiosity; have no medical need for it, whatsoever.

Would your approach be classified as intermittent fasting? I know there have been some studies in the last few years pointing to the effects of intermittent fasting being as beneficial as caloric restriction for life extension.

Would your approach be classified as intermittent fasting? I know there have been some studies in the last few years pointing to the effects of intermittent fasting being as beneficial as caloric restriction for life extension.

I don’t believe there’s a formal definition, but in the literature, IF, Intermittent Fasting, generally refers to cycles of fasting/eating with a 24 hour period. A 48 period of fasting/feeding is called ADF - Alternate Day Fasting. Continuous fasting for more than 36 or 48 hours is generally called EF, Extended Fasting.

Health and longevity are often the reasons behind trying all of the above - but weight loss is also a frequent goal, and there is good research about the benefits of EF for people who want to increase their tolerance of cancer chemotherapy.

No, it would be a good thing. Chemotherapy is supposed to only make the cancer cells miserable. Unfortunately, there’s no way to do that without making the patient miserable also. It’s no good for people especially in an already weakened state.

If the patient is better able to handle the hazards of chemotherapy they are somewhat more able to live a life while going through the regime.

Ahh I misunderstood. Yea, I’ve heard chemotherapy is very tormenting… I hope precision medicine is able to address some of these problems someday but I guess for now the best thing anyone can do is try to overcome the side effects.

Wouldn’t… building a tolerance to the treatment be a bad thing…? Maybe I misunderstood.

The research suggests that a lot of the toxicity of chemotherapy to the patient (as opposed to toxicity to the cancer) doesn’t actually come from the chemotherapy agents, but from the body’s reaction to it. Specifically, some cells in the body, like white blood cells, get ravaged by chemotherapy drugs. If you suddenly kill off a lot of white blood cells, the release of natural compounds within the cells leads to a lot of the acute symptoms like nausea, weakness, etc.

A 72 hour fast, however, forces your body into a protein-recycling mode (autophagy, consuming one’s self.) It turns out that a 72 hour fast causes the body to re-absorb, on a controlled basis, about 1/3 of the white blood cells - and the cells that are re-absorbed are the weakest/oldest/most vulnerable. The same cells which would be most likely to die immediately if you take a chemotherapy treatment. The healthier/stronger cells survive the fast, and survive the chemotherapy.

So fasting before chemo is a potential way to reduce the shock to your system… and afterwards, when you start eating again (refeeding), the body replaces those lost blood cells… with healthy new ones!

Results in mice are first evidence of natural intervention triggering stem cell-dependent regeneration of organ or system.

In theory, the same effect can be at play in other bodily cells, but the best research, so far, has been on white blood cells, which are easy to sample and count and analyze. I’ve had no chemotherapy, but I like to play with things, and periodically replacing my oldest/weakest cells with healthy young ones sounds cool.

I thought that fasting was cool when I did it many years ago. The second day was the worst, then it got easier. If I got to a fifth day, I felt kind of unsubstantial and floaty, and decided I might die if I kept it up much longer. Then I would go off and reread Kafka’s A Hunger Artist, but I would end the fast.

I once did a political fast. I don’t know how long I could have kept it up. On the sixth day, the morons in charge (the ones not on the fast, but providing “support and leadership” from the sidelines) decided that we were getting too much press and called it off. (Silly journalists were interviewing the people on the fast rather than the “leadership”.)

Anyway, I felt great on it. The food obsession started on about the third day. When it was called off, I was warned to stay on soup and other light stuff. Heck with that! I went to the local gourmet hot dog place and had the greatest hot dog and corn on the cob ever. People watched in amazement and predicted doom but there were no ill effects.